“Sharp as steel with discontent”
Editorial cartoon by Ollie Harrington
We were watching a documentary about Pete Seeger when the image and amazing voice of Paul Robeson filled the screen. Robeson–a prodigious talent who excelled in fields as varied as the football field, concert hall, movie screen and university classroom–was hounded for his political positions for decades. He was labeled a Communist, a traitor and an enemy, but he wasn’t the only African-American talent who was so victimized by racism that he had to seek refuge among Communists in the Soviet Union.
Poet Claude McKay and cartoonist Ollie Harrington also found exile from a hostile America behind the Iron Curtain. Harrington was a very gifted cartoonist who illustrated children’s books, created an African-American Everyman named Bootsie and crafted fine editorial cartoons like the one above that wonders why we’re neglecting hungry children for the sake of making weapons. That cartoon is as timely today as it was in the 1960s.
Robeson, McKay and Harrington were too smart, too proud, too talented and not subservient enough to make it in a Land of the Free that expected black men to be Stepin Fetchits.
McKay eventually returned to the United States. An agnostic, he converted to Catholicism during his last years. Here’s his “White Houses”:
Your door is shut against my tightened face,
And I am sharp as steel with discontent;
But I possess the courage and the grace
To bear my anger proudly and unbent.
The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet,
A chafing savage, down the decent street;
And passion rends my vitals as I pass,
Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.
Oh, I must search for wisdom every hour,
Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw,
And find in it the superhuman power
To hold me to the letter of your law!
Oh, I must keep my heart inviolate
Against the potent poison of your hate.
